Bob Hunter commentary: Anger at LeBron fades as reunion talk surfaces

Based on my unofficial readings, a shift of historic proportions is occurring in Ohio sports circles. LeBron James, aka the Great Satan, doesn't seem to be a villain anymore.

Bob Hunter, The Columbus Dispatch

Based on my unofficial readings, a shift of historic proportions is occurring in Ohio sports circles. LeBron James, aka the Great Satan, doesn’t seem to be a villain anymore.

His playoff heroics no longer bother people. His chance of winning another NBA title for the Miami Heat has fallen off the list of things to worry about. His betrayal of Cleveland has assumed the shape of ancient history.

It’s difficult to know when this started, but the ground is still moving and its direction is no mystery — rooting against LeBron is no longer on Ohio’s to-do list.

My guess is that it started when James and the Heat won their first NBA title a year ago. No Cavaliers fan wanted to see James get rewarded for taking his talents to South Beach, as he so arrogantly announced in his own television special. But after Miami won, fans unclenched their teeth and accepted what most of us knew was inevitable. James is an incredible player, maybe the best basketball player on the planet, and it was folly to think that he would never get that done.

I think the real shift occurred when the media began to debate the notion that James might return to the Cavs in 2014 when he can opt out of his contract. Implausible as this seemed, James said more than a year ago that a return to the Cavaliers would be “great” and “hopefully the fans will accept me,” and just this month, he dropped $1 million on his old high school, Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary, for the renovation of its gymnasium.

Some of the stars also started to align. Cleveland won the top draft pick in the lottery for the second time in three years, which even in a down draft year should mean more help is on the way. James wouldn’t consider returning to Cleveland if the team couldn’t be a championship contender. With another No. 1 overall pick and Kyrie Irving, Dion Waiters, Tristan Thompson and Tyler Zeller there from recent drafts, a framework of attractive young talent might help bring James back.

Then there was that intriguing news conference a few weeks ago where coach Mike Brown returned to the Cavs and everyone discussed what kind of impact the move might have on James’ possible return to Cleveland — without mentioning him by name. League rules against tampering prohibit that, but the questions about “the elephant in the room” made it clear that, weird as it was, this is what people have on their minds.

“About the elephant? I don’t know how to answer that,” Cavs owner Dan Gilbert said. “We honestly talk about today, this year. A lot of stuff is in the media obviously. … Obviously it’s in the media because that’s of interest to people.”

Fans know when to be bitter, but they also know when to be conciliatory. If they ever hope to see the Cavs win an NBA title, their best chance will come if they welcome James back.

Gilbert knows this, too. He fired Brown in 2010, hoping that would help him keep James, and he ripped LeBron when he left, even predicting, absurdly, that the Cavs would win a title before the Heat. Gilbert’s sanity has since been restored. The first bite of this might not be easy to swallow, but the more you chew, the less bitter the taste.

“In NBA terms, there’s so much that happens in a year,” Gilbert said at Brown’s news conference. “There’s so many different variables that happen. You can’t even speculate in the next 12 months what’s going to happen or where we’re going to be or where anybody else is going to be. You focus on right now.”

Except.

“There’s also a ton of cap space available to us to exercise at the right time.”

That might be a pipe dream, but it’s fun to behold its magic. It already has turned James from villain into “elephant,” so it’s hard not to wonder what’s next.